by Anna Lowe
The road forked, then led over a dry creek and finally under a timber gateway hung with an honest to God old-fashioned cattle brand — two circles, overlapping by a third.
“Twin Moon Ranch,” he murmured, taking a deep breath.
The place had developed quite a reputation over the past few years. The new powerhouse among shifter packs in the West, everyone said. Even the rough, tough drifter pack he’d led had kept a respectful distance from the place.
He parked his truck just outside the gateway and slid out, careful to keep his hands in plain view.
“Hello?”
The ranch was quiet. Eerily so.
Two rows of false-fronted buildings hemmed in a wide, dusty lane. A pinto stood tied to a hitching post, quietly swishing its tail in the shade of mighty cottonwood trees. Brownish-green leaves rustled overhead, and that was about the only sound except for the hurried footsteps of a kid who’d bolted the second he spotted Luke.
“Hello?” Luke called.
It was just like one of those Wild West movie scenes when a stranger arrives in a town and finds the place quiet. Too quiet. Luke looked around, half expecting a dozen cowboys to come rushing out, each aiming a Colt .45 at his head.
Footsteps sounded behind him, and he whirled.
Chapter Five
“Howdy,” a voice rang out. The voice was friendly but guarded; chipper yet wary.
Luke turned as a man stepped out from between two buildings. A man nothing like what he expected, because he didn’t look so much like a cowboy as a surfer dude with scrappy blond hair and a million-dollar smile.
“Can I help you?” surfer-dude asked.
Can I help you? had What the hell are you doing here? coded between the lines, but the guy seemed to be withholding judgment. For now.
“Luke Brandstetter.” His tongue nearly tripped over the sound of his own name.
“Cody Hawthorne,” the man said, shaking Luke’s hand with a tight grip that said, I’d love to trust you, but I don’t. Not one bit. Then he smiled in a way that meant, Don’t take it personally.
Luke immediately liked the man. And hell, he was impressed that the guy hadn’t already called out half a dozen thugs to back him up.
Maybe the new haircut was working. Or maybe this guy was just supremely confident in his own fighting skills. Either way, Luke wasn’t here for a fight, and he made that clear, keeping his hands loose instead of locked into fists.
“I’m looking for Kyle Williams,” he said.
Surfer-dude — er, Cody — looked him up and down. “And what would you want with Kyle?”
He took a deep breath because, whoa — the moment he’d been thinking about for a long, long time had finally come. The first step on the long road home.
“I heard he killed Greer Steton of North Ridge pack.” Luke just about spat the name out along with the bitter aftertaste it brought.
Cody Hawthorne tilted his head. “Greer Steton was a bastard son of a bitch who didn’t deserve the title of alpha. You got a problem with that?”
No, he didn’t have a problem with that, except for wishing he’d been the one to do the deed. “That bastard son of a bitch, Greer, killed my father. My uncle. My older brother.”
As he said the words, images he’d locked away years ago came flooding back. He saw the slow, torturous deaths of his loved ones, strung up as a warning to anyone who dared to stand up to Greer’s despotic regime.
He remembered it all, right down to his mother screaming, Run, Luke. Run!
Just thinking about it made him sick. He’d wanted to stand and fight with the others, but he’d been only fourteen.
Run, Luke. Run.
He swallowed hard. Yes, he had run. Long and hard until he was miles from North Ridge. He’d eked out a living on the streets until he fell in with one band of rogues — then another, and another until he saw himself as one of them and not a member of a once-proud pack brought to its knees.
He cleared his throat and blinked into the sunlight filtering through the trees. He’d been running for too many years. Blocking out the ugly parts of his past — especially the ugliest part, which he couldn’t even bring himself to say. Not to this stranger. Not here. Not now.
“I came to thank Kyle Williams for killing Greer.” The memories put a shake in his voice, so he coughed and made sure the rest came out firmly. “That’s all I want here. Just to say thank you. Then I’ll be on my way.”
Cody’s gaze softened a bit. Did he know the horrors Greer had inflicted on the wolves of North Ridge pack? Could he imagine what abuses Luke’s mother and sister had been subjected to?
“Then you’ll be on your way where?”
Luke very nearly retorted with a None of your goddamned business, but he reined it in. This was day one in his new life. He wasn’t a rogue any more, which meant he had to ask nicely for what he wanted instead of just taking it.
“North Ridge.”
Cody’s eyes narrowed. Could a guy from a quiet backwater like Twin Moon Ranch understand what it was like, coming from a messed-up place like North Ridge?
“And what exactly do you plan to do there?”
A good question. Luke wasn’t so sure himself. The oldest of his uncles had been alpha of North Ridge pack until Greer came along, and Luke sometimes found himself entertaining notions of taking on the role himself. Over the years, he’d worked up the hierarchy of the rogue pack until he was top dog. He’d whipped a scrappy band of rogues into an organized and relatively civil group of drifters. Oh, they had their wild ways, but the meaningless violence and random attacks were a thing of the past.
So, yeah. He could lead a pack. But did he want to?
He cleared his throat and kept his answer as vague as his plans. “I just want to help get the pack back on its feet. To do what I should have done years ago.”
“And what’s that?”
“Find my mother. My relatives. Help them get their lives back together.” He shrugged, trying to push unfamiliar emotions away.
A long, quiet minute ticked by in which Luke didn’t trust himself to say much else. He’d forgotten how much the memories hurt. Forgetting — or pretending to forget — was so much easier, but he’d done enough of that.
Cody nodded. “Tell you what. I’ll walk you to Kyle’s house myself.”
And off they went, a couple of wolves — perfect strangers who had no real reason to trust each other except the honesty in each other’s voices — strolling side by side like that happened every day.
Which was crazy because, in most places, shifters didn’t welcome strangers onto their home turf. They didn’t help them come to terms with their own demons. At least, none of the shifters Luke knew. Not the wolves, not the bears he’d met, and definitely not the cougars.
Luke looked around. Maybe these wolves were different. Maybe they valued peace along with prosperity and defending their home turf. Maybe this place was as special as the rumors said.
Cody led him past tidy homes and stepped over an irrigation ditch gurgling with water that nourished lush lawns. The winter sun shone, and it was nippy at this high altitude, but it still felt good to walk in the shade. People waved at Cody and gave Luke polite nods. Two little girls whizzed by on bikes, and a big black dog loped after them with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.
“Hi, Daddy!” one yelled.
“Hi, sweetie.” Cody waved.
It was like the best parts of Luke’s memories — the ones that stretched from before Greer’s arrival at North Ridge — all jumped out of nowhere and replayed themselves in front of his eyes. Which was weird, because he never really thought of them as memories. More like fantasies of how life could have been.
“Has Twin Moon Ranch always been like this?” he couldn’t help asking. Almost whispering.
“Like what?” Cody asked, not even turning around.
“This…nice. This quiet. This…safe.”
Cody laughed. “Not when I was a kid. But the last couple of y
ears have been good ones.” He waved a hand in the direction the kids had gone. “And we’ll make sure it stays that way.”
Cody left out the firm damn it that punctuated his sentence, but it wasn’t necessary. The determination was palpable in the man’s voice, as was the We worked our asses off to make it this way.
Luke looked around, wondering if it would be possible to bring serenity to a place as brutalized as North Ridge. He was ready to work his ass off, for sure. But would the wolves of North Ridge pack welcome him? Would anyone even recognize him?
He straightened his shoulders. Those were questions for later. Right now, Cody was leading him up to a house that stood behind a little rise, away from the rest. A place with new windows and a new porch and a lawn so green it had to be young — like the family that inhabited the place, judging by the toys littering the grass.
Cody didn’t knock on the door. He hollered. “Hey, Kyle. Hey, Stef. I got someone who wants to meet you.”
A young woman came to the door holding a toddler on her hip. A cute little guy with spiky brown hair. “Hi,” she said, looking from Cody to Luke.
Luke wished he had a hat to tip to her the way Cody did.
“Hi,” he settled for saying as politely as he possibly could.
The woman called over her shoulder. “You coming, Kyle?”
A shadow moved in the hallway behind her, and Luke stuck out his hand, ready to greet the man who’d rid the world of a true beast.
“Kyle, this is Luke Brandst—” Cody started before the peaceful scene exploded into chaos.
An ear-splitting roar cut through the air. A scream followed. Everything blurred, and Luke was slammed into the ground by a heavy weight. The world turned into a flurry of shouts and flailing limbs.
“No. Kyle, no!” the woman screamed.
Luke stuck out his hands. He was flat on his back in the gravel pathway with a furious wolf poised, ready to tear his throat out. He was fast, but damn, this Kyle guy was a tornado.
“Daddy! Daddy!” the kid bawled.
“Hold it, Kyle!” Cody shouted.
You will die, the wolf poised above him said with a clack of its teeth.
Luke held perfectly still as the wolf’s saliva dripped onto his cheek, slowly processing what had happened. The guy who’d come to the door with a relaxed, curious look had shifted into wolf form and attacked him out of the blue.
Luke stuck his hands up. “Whoa. Take it easy. What did I do?”
The wolf was so close, Luke couldn’t help but inhale its scent. Something about it seemed familiar, somehow. But how?
“He’s who?” the woman yelped, looking at the wolf. She scooped her son closer and scuttled back a few steps, glaring at Luke.
What the hell was going on?
“What? Who is he?” Cody asked the wolf.
The wolf — Kyle — was too busy snarling to answer. But slowly, a vague picture formed in Luke’s mind — a picture of a bar in some godforsaken corner of the earth that he’d stopped at years ago. That was back in his time with a biker gang he’d briefly joined at the peak of their wildest days. A couple of rednecks had picked a fight with one of the gang members, and a brawl had broken out. The cops had showed up and—
Oh, shit.
At the very moment that Luke remembered what had happened, Cody cried out to Kyle.
“What? This is the guy who attacked you?”
“Wait,” Luke tried, but the wolf above him kept snarling.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. How was he supposed to know Kyle was the very guy he’d accidentally clawed in that brawl so long ago? The wound had been deep enough to turn the human into a wolf shifter in a slow, excruciating process that few men survived.
Well, this guy had survived, all right. And boy, was he pissed.
Luke kept his hands up. The alpha side of his soul demanded that he fight back, but he resisted. He’d resolved to own up to his past and damn it, this ugly surprise was part of the process. The first and possibly last part, given how close the points of those fangs were to his throat.
Kyle growled ominously, eyeing Luke’s neck.
“Daddy! Daddy!” came a terrified squeal, making the wolf pause. A second later, the growl resumed, but on a different note. Not so much a prepare to die growl as a wait till I get you out of sight of my family sound that promised a slow, painful death.
The woman — Stef — stepped forward. Even though the massive wolf spat and growled and showed a hell of a lot of white, she showed no fear. She stroked Kyle’s coat, murmured in a low voice, and clutched at his ruff.
Finally, with a vicious bark inserted into his growl, Kyle lifted his muzzle clear of Luke’s throat and stepped back. He shook with fury and kept one step ahead of his mate, shielding her body with his.
Luke wanted to protest. He wasn’t here to threaten a woman or to terrorize a kid.
You sure as hell did bring it upon yourself, though, a dark voice in the back of his mind said.
“Okay, Kyle, we got this,” Cody tried, and though his voice was silk over the turbulence of the scene, Kyle aimed another defiant snap in Luke’s direction.
Footsteps thumped along the path as two men ran into the yard.
“What the hell is going on?” one of them thundered. The pack alpha. It had to be.
Kyle, still in wolf form, twitched his tail in fury, and Luke rolled away. Yeah, it was pretty damn clear who was crawling away from whom here, and he didn’t like that one bit.
Turning over a new leaf, he told himself over and over. Turning over a new leaf.
But, man. Who knew it could be so hard to do such a simple thing?
The newcomers yanked Luke unceremoniously to his feet.
“Who the hell are you?” the tall, dark, and dangerous one thundered, shaking him.
The spiky-haired wolf paced, swinging its head in an angry arc, guarding his family.
The sight of the terrified kid hiding behind the mom made Luke sick. The child looked at him as if he were a monster. Exactly the way Luke had looked at Greer, once upon a time.
“Fucking Greer,” he cursed under his breath so the kid didn’t hear. He already had plenty of reasons to make good on the mess that was his past, but now he had another one. He would make something of himself, damn it, so that kids would look up at him with respect and not fear. He’d amass enough good deeds to overwrite all the crap he’d been known for up to then.
He’d do all that — if these wolves let him off Twin Moon Ranch alive and unskinned.
“Take him to the council house,” Cody said, exchanging looks with the alpha.
The two men hauled him off, all the way back across the ranch and up a couple of stairs. Then they threw him through a doorway into a building. He skidded across the wooden floor, scraping every inch of exposed skin raw until he came to rest against someone’s foot.
“Hey,” a woman yelped, stepping back.
It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the dim light — a minute in which several pairs of heavy boots clomped across the floor, making him wonder if they’d hauled him inside to talk or to beat the crap out of him.
He looked up — and up and up. A long way up a familiar pair of lean legs clad in leather boots. Scuffed leather boots with laces that ended in little tassels tied high and at the back.
Oh, shit.
He knew those legs. He knew the line of that waist. But, whoa — what was she doing here?
Carly’s blue eyes bit into his as she slammed her hands onto her hips. “You.”
He’d have said it at exactly the same time if it hadn’t been for the big guy who lifted him clear off the floor and gripped him by the throat. He couldn’t get a damned sound out. Not even a squeak.
Carly looked him up and down and narrowed her eyes, taking in his split lip and his dusty jeans.
“This is how you turn over a new leaf?”
Chapter Six
Carly stood as still as a statue, because it was either that or wobble on her feet. The man she�
��d barely pried herself away from that morning — the one she’d all but run away from because he was so terrifyingly hard to resist — had come to Twin Moon Ranch?
He’s here! He’s here! Her wolf jumped up and down, wagging its tail.
Stupid beast. Hadn’t it been listening to her lecture about not getting involved with a man?
Mine! her wolf cried. Mate!
Crap. Why hadn’t Luke — smoking hot, one-night stand Luke — hit the road like he was supposed to? And why was her body on fire all over again?
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, hating the way her heart went pitter-patter.
She’d been pushing away memories of last night ever since she’d arrived on the ranch, but now all the heated, sensual images flooded back. She remembered Luke’s reverent touch. His raw, pulsing power. The need that had swept over her when they’d touched.
She closed her eyes, but that just made the memories stronger. Luke knew just how to lick her to the edge of shattering pleasure — then ease her back so he could tease and torture her a little more. She’d never made love with such passion. Never needed a man that badly. And she’d never, ever been so close to shedding joyous tears.
I didn’t want last night to end, her wolf cried.
Which was why she’d forced herself away. One minute longer wrapped in his arms and she might have forgotten her vow never to grow close to a man.
Is that why you took his jacket? her wolf asked.
The jacket was a trophy, not a souvenir, she insisted.
Sure. Keep telling yourself that.
A good thing she’d left the leather jacket draped over the handlebar of her bike. Her siblings would be all over her if they picked up Luke’s scent. Even at twenty-seven years old, they treated her like the baby of the family. Ty, her oldest brother, was the bossiest of the bunch. Tina was more like a mother than a sister at times, and even Carly’s fun-loving brother, Cody, gave her hell for fooling around with anyone at all. He and Ty would flip out and play their older-brother, alpha-wolf cards if they knew she’d spent the night with Luke.
Did we have to leave Luke without saying good-bye? her wolf complained.